IIT Kharagpur rejects new format, backs IIT Kanpur

New Delhi: The faculty of IIT Kharagpur have rejected the proposed format for a Common Entrance Test into IITs and centrally aided engineering colleges.

"IITs have become what they are because they have been allowed to function independently, and set appropriate standards in carrying out their academic responsibilities. The IIT Council proposal, if implemented, will seriously compromise the autonomy so essential for IITs to remain what they are," IIT Kharagpur said in a statement.

"As a whole the new format is a retrograde step and reverses the continuous churning within the IIT system to improve its admission process academically. The decision to effect the changes, that too from 2013, against all academic advice, reeks of executive brinkmanship with the sole aim of hogging the limelight for reforms credit," it said.

IIT Kanpur has already taken on Union HRD Minister Kapil Sibal, rejecting his proposal. IIT Kanpur has said it will conduct its own entrance examination in 2013 and will co-ordinate with those IITs who choose to join their admission process.

President Faculty Forum IIT Delhi Professor Sanjeev Sanghi speaking to CNN-IBN said, "We fully support what IIT-Kanpur has done. They were Left with no option. What IIT Kanpur has done was only expected as IIT's views were not considered by the senate. The HRD Ministry cannot force the IITs on academic issues."

Senate of IIT-Delhi will meet soon and discuss about conducting own exam.

IIT Kanpur Professor AK Chaturvedi said, "Hopes of lakhs of students each year rest on these exams. So the government shouldn't take it lightly. The decision on JEE should be taken after proper research and figures are taken into account."

Terming it as a very important development, IIT-Delhi alumni president Somnath Bharti said "other senates are likely to follow the suit".

The Senate of IIT Kanpur said that the recent IIT Council proposal on admissions to IITs is "academically and methodically unsound and in violation of the Institutes of Technology Act (1961) and IIT Kanpur Ordinances (Ordinance 3.2 (Admissions)".

"....the Senate resolves that IIT Kanpur will conduct the entrance examination for admissions to its undergraduate programmes in 2013," it said.

The decision came days after government rejected criticism of the decision to have a common IIT-JEE examination from 2013.

Sibal had claimed that it was approved without dissent at the IIT Council meeting and had the backing of the senates of four of the seven Indian Institutes of Technology.

He had maintained that he had categorically stated at the IIT council meeting that if "there is a single dissent" he will not go ahead with the proposal.

"The council consists of the IITs, the IIITs and the NITs. There was not a single dissent. It was unanimously adopted. Therefore, I went forward," the Minister had said.

Last month, Sibal had announced that from 2013, aspiring candidates for IITs and other central institutes like NITs and IIITs will have to sit under new a format of common entrance test which will also take plus two board results into consideration.